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Comment by lotsofpulp | Hacker News Reader

>Like the artificial sweeteners maybe?

>"0 calories and the same taste with the sugar? Why would anybody ever use sugar again, right? Lets short the sugar cane and corn fields and put all our money into artificial sweeteners production equipment and chemicals"

No one ever thought this because low calorie sweeteners taste different than refined sugar. Even cane sugar tastes different than high fructose corn syrup. Also, they are all chemicals. Everything is. Stevia is even extracted from a plant, just like cane sugar or corn syrup.

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It's hypothetical example for a product that is supposed to be a replacement to something we readily use but has an issue like being too expensive/rare/hard to make.

I don't know much about sweeteners, for me its this thing that you can use instead of sugar if you are concerned about calories.

It is incredibly obvious what is colloquially meant by “chemicals”. There’s no such thing as a fish. Blah blah blah. Don’t be tone-deaf in the name of scoring an extra point online.

It's obvious, but worthless. It's an entirely subjective metric, easily gamed by marketing, and correlates poorly with things that actually matter.

Other than to baselessly denigrate, it is not obvious to me what is meant by “chemicals”.

A working description might be some combination of:

- Synthesized or highly processed versions of or replacements for a normally natural or well established substance; often for the purpose of cost. E.g. high fructose corn syrup, artificial flavors, rayon, chrome tanned leather, etc.

- Synthesized or highly processed substances that promise to provide the advantages of a natural or well established substance but without any of the drawbacks. E.g. sweeteners without calories, waterproofing sprays that promise breathability, anti-stick coatings that don't require the care of cast iron, replacing metal with light weight plastics, etc.

For me it tends to come down to two rules of thumb that my life experience has given me:

- Highly processed products (particularly food) tend to be unhealthy.

- There is no free lunch. If some new material promises to eliminate the drawbacks of an existing material, then it probably has different drawbacks that you don't know about yet.

> There is no free lunch

This is just a heuristic, and honestly barely that. It's a belief.

Often there really is free lunch, and that's just progress. Sometimes I think people like to pretend otherwise because it's comforting to deny yourself of convenience.

Aspartame really is zero calories. And it really is safe. Yes, much safer than sugar. No, it doesn't magically make you gain weight. No, it doesn't cause cancer (feeding rats 500 coke bottles worth of aspartame doesn't count!). Yes, it's less carcinogenic than red meat.

From a health standpoint it's better in every single way. Of course taste is another thing all together, and subjective. Point being, yes things CAN just be better.

But low-calorie sugars provide a rationalization for overconsumption instead of changing behaviors. To me, every single one tastes terrible. But worst, they send a confusing signal to your gut because the taste of sweetness naturally corresponds to easy calories, but when they don't arrive, you don't get satiated. This dovetails with the rationalization, significantly contributing to the obesity epidemic. Free lunch what?

Are you sure your claim is true? I drink a 12oz low calorie sweetener soda maybe once a week, and use low calorie sweetened chocolate chips (Bake Believe, uses erythritol) for things like cookies or pancakes (also eaten only once in a while).

I eat no more than I otherwise would, and I avoid the spike in blood glucose.

I see a lot of negative claims around low calorie sweeteners, but no proof.

However, I see irrefutable proof of negative effects of sucrose and glucose and fructose most times I am in public, and in the diabetes and obesity statistics.

And I also have read credibly reports about the sugar industry corrupted research to avoid being in the crosshairs. As a result, I would not put it past them to try to vilify low calorie sweeteners either.

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullar...

Obviously, excess low calorie sweeteners is bad, just like everything else in excess. But the question is, is a low calorie sweetener soda nutritionally better than a sugar soda, or low calorie sweetener candy/popsicle/etc better than the sugar alternative.

So far, I would say the answer is an obvious yes, given what we know about the effects of excess simple carbohydrate consumption.

Claiming zero-calorie sweeteners, which by definition cannot contribute to weight gain as it's impossible, are "contributing to obesity" is a BOLD claim. I'm talking science-shattering hundreds of studies disproving bold.

Listen, you can't just make things up. Just because you feel as though something is too good to be true doesn't mean it actually is.

This is like those people who think Ozempic makes your eyes melt and stuff.

The problem is in capitalistic society "pain is gain" is ingrained since you left the womb. People often have trouble conceptualizing that you can get good results without suffering. People actually ENJOY the suffering because they think it directly translates into good stuff for them and their life.

It's not a healthy, or rationale, way to operate. Ensuring your own misery out of a desperate need to prove yourself and your work ethic is just self-destructive behavior. Sorry to be the one to tell you.

Heuristics exist because they are useful. It's not possible for an individual to research every new chemical that comes along. Even if they do, they don't have a good way of knowing if the research they are reading is reliable. So they need some rule for dealing with new chemicals.

1. Aspartame is not new

2. Aspartame is safe and there's not a scientist on Earth who claims otherwise.

3. While we may not know NEW stuff, we do know old stuff. Sugar quite literally kills people. An alternative could, AND DOES, save lives.

The people posting about chemicals-in-the-food and stuff like that in my area definitely don't see high fructose corn syrup as a chemical - "it comes from corn and corn is grown in fields" is all I ever got out of that discussion - but definitely do see stevia as one.

Maybe the definition is more of a regional thing. Or maybe it's just more BS. In any case I don't think it's remotely consistent or concrete.

Me neither but I bought mushrooms just the other night and I kid you not the cellophane-wrapped styrofoam packet was emblazoned with a "chemical free" sticker so clearly it's gotta mean something.

What is colloquially meant by 'chemicals'? I usually take it to mean 'a substance with a name that I don't understand and that I think isn't natural and that I want to imply is not good for you' and there is no definition beyond that. It is perfectly reasonable to point out that this is irrational.

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